My favorite Emeril Lagasse slogan is Kick it up a notch! Of course for Emeril that is followed by his favorite slogan BAM!!! where he dusts whatever it is in more of the seasoning that he wants to sell you. I agree with the notion of adding something to make it better, but not necessarily that it is always more seasoning. I know I go on and on about our access these days to foods that weren’t readily available in the good old days, but it is very nice to go to the Whole Foods or Fresh Market and always be able find lamb and duck and rabbit. Maybe one day we will be able to count on finding fresh eel and abalone like you can in Houston and Austin. I certainly hope so. Anyway, I marinated this lamb steak over night in some syrup left over from a jar of fig preserves and added Lea & Perrins and roasted garlic olive oil and garlic salt/garlic powder/onion powder/black pepper and fired up the gas grill and went 5 minutes a side on high.
This gave me a nice mid-rare steak. I used about half of it for this lunch dish. The rest is cooling its heels, waiting to meet up with bread and mustard later this week. I wanted to play around with a packaged porcini risotto I found at Whole Foods while I was stocking up on packaged rice pilaf (another one of my go to sides) and that is where kick it up a notch comes in. I am constitutionally unable to just follow the directions on the box. In this case I sautéed some baby bellas and red onion before throwing it all in the rice maker and letting it roll. Before I plated it, I added a bag of steamed frozen vegetables. This mix was asparagus with white and yellow corn and carrots. In the back of my mind, I was already planning to reheat some and add in scrambled eggs and green onions for an Italian style fried rice later this week. BAM!!!
